Law Commons^™

Tax Reporting As Regulation Of Digital Financial Markets, Young Ran (Christine) Kim

Articles

FTX’s recent collapse highlights the overall instability that blockchain assets and digital financial markets face. While the use of blockchain technology and crypto assets is widely prevalent, the associated market is still largely unregulated, and the future of digital asset regulation is also unclear. The lack of clarity and regulation has led to public distrust and has called for more dedicated regulation of digital assets. Among those regulatory efforts, tax policy plays an important role. This Essay introduces comprehensive regulatory frameworks for blockchain-based assets that have been introduced globally and domestically, and it shows that tax reporting is the key …

State Digital Services Taxes: A Good And Permissible Idea (Despite What You Might Have Heard), Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Darien Shanske

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Tax systems have been struggling to adapt to the digitalization of the economy. At the center of the struggles is taxing digital platforms, such as Google or Facebook. These immensely profitable firms have a business model that gives away “free” services, such as searching the web. The service is not really free; it is paid for by having the users watch ads and tender data. Traditional tax systems are not designed to tax such barter transactions, leaving a gap in taxation.

One response, pioneered in Europe, has been the creation of a wholly new tax to target digital platforms: the …

Applying The First Amendment To The Internal Revenue Code: Minnesota Voters Alliance And The Tax Law’S Regulation Of Nonprofit Organizations’ Political Speech, Edward A. Zelinsky

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On its face, Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky is about which T-shirts, hats and buttons voters can wear at the polls. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment analysis in Minnesota Voters Alliance extends beyond apparel at polling places. That decision impacts the ongoing debate about the Johnson Amendment, the now controversial provision of the Internal Revenue Code which forbids Section 501(c)(3) organizations from intervening in political campaigns. Minnesota Voters Alliance also affects the proper construction of Section 501(c)(3)’s ban on lobbying by tax-exempt entities as well as other provisions of the tax law taxing and precluding campaign intervention by …

The Federal Law Of Property: The Case Of Inheritance Disclaimers And Tenancy By The Entireties, David G. Carlson

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The Supreme Court has issued two disturbing tax opinions which disrupt the notion that “property” (when used in federal statutes) refers to state-law notions. In Drye v. United States, the Supreme Court pierced the Arkansas fiction that inheritance disclaimers are retrospective in effect. Thus the Internal Revenue could claim that a tax lien attached to the pre-disclaimer inheritance. Disclaimer could not defeat this lien. In United States v. Craft, the Supreme Court pierced the Michigan fiction that a tenancy by the entireties does not belong to the individual spouses but, rather, the a corporate “marital” entity that is a separate …

Churches' Lobbying And Campaigning: A Proposed Statutory Safe Harbor For Internal Church Communications, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

President Trump, reiterating the position he took during the presidential campaign, has recently reaffirmed his pledge to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment,” the provision of the Internal Revenue Code which prohibits tax-exempt institutions from participating in political campaigns. The Code also bars tax-exempt institutions, including churches, from substantial lobbying activities.

Rather than the blanket repeal of the Johnson Amendment proposed by President Trump, I argue for a statutory safe harbor for the internal communications of churches. This limited safe harbor would protect in-house church discussions from both Section 501(c)(3)’s ban on substantial lobbying and from that …

Is Federalization Of Charity Law All Bad? What States Can Learn From The Internal Revenue Code, Melanie B. Leslie

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No abstract provided.

Putting State Courts In The Constitutional Driver's Seat: State Taxpayer Standing After Cuno And Winn, Edward A. Zelinsky

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This article explores the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn. In Cuno and Winn, the Court held that state taxpayers lacked standing in the federal courts. Because the states have more liberal taxpayer standing rules than do the federal courts, Cuno and Winn will not terminate taxpayers’ constitutional challenges to state taxes and expenditures, but will instead channel such challenges from the federal courts (where taxpayers do not have standing) to the state courts (where they do). Moreover, municipal taxpayer standing in the federal courts, which …

Cuno: The Property Tax Issue, Edward A. Zelinsky

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The author criticizes the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler Inc., in which the court ruled that Ohio's investment tax credit violated the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. Zelinsky says the dormant Commerce Clause concept of nondiscrimination is overbroad and undefinable and should be abandoned. He hopes this decision will give the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to reassess the concept.

The Once And Future Property Tax: A Dialogue With My Younger Self, Edward A. Zelinsky

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As I look back on my youth (expansively defined as the first 40 years of my life), everywhere I went, the local real property tax was perceived as both bad and doomed. If I could speak with the brash young law student/graduate student/alderman I once was, he would undoubtedly tell me, with great confidence, that by the beginning of the next century (which then seemed very far away) the property tax would no longer play a role in the system of local public finance.

Alas, he was wrong.

This essay explains why the young man I once was, confident of …

James Madison And Public Choice At Gucci Gulch: A Procedural Defense Of Tax Expenditures And Tax Institutions, Edward A. Zelinsky

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Few academic doctrines can claim the intellectual and political success of tax expenditure analysis. In roughly a generation's time, Professor Surrey's procedural and substantive critique of tax subsidies has become entrenched in the law school curriculum and in legal scholarship. More impressively, the tax expenditure concept has been enshrined in federal law and become part of the daily discourse of the national budget process.

Efficiency And Income Taxes: The Rehabilitation Of Tax Incentives, Edward A. Zelinsky

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This Article explores two prominent issues in current legal literature: the propriety of tax incentives in the federal income tax and the use of economic analysis to examine questions of concern to academic lawyers. One premise of this Article is that there is a connection between these two topics.